Michael MaccambridgeAmerica's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation (Vintage)

Excellent

Many non-American fans of this beautiful game have had to scrape around for tit-bits about the history of the NFL and the game of football it regulates. This very readable history starts during the nineteen forties, by which time the rules of the game had been settled and a small cadre of teams were playing games regularly during a recognisable season, and transports the reader through the complex political and commercial events to finish in 2005. You will meet and understand some of the greatest names in the game, getting to grips with George Halas, Dan Reeves and Tex Schramm, to end up admiring their political genius as well as their management flair. Coaching names that you may have only glimpsed as ghostly silhouettes in discussions during broadcasts from the US will come into sharp focus, allowing a full understanding of their passion for the game as well as their sometimes stormy temperaments. Over and above all will be the flow and development of the NFL under Commissioners with spooky levels of foresight who always aimed to improve and promote what was to become America's Game, a game that is now spreading it's influence in the UK and elsewhere.

Great book on American Football from the 1950'ies and until the present. How the sport has been emerging through decades until it is by now the most popular American sport.

For a UK follower of pro football this was a superb read. Having little or no knowledge of pre and early NFL days this gave a fascinating insight into the characters involved and the values followed in making the NFL the sporting behemoth it is today.The author doesn't disappoint in any area and generally maintains a fine balance between the political and the on field action.It must have been difficult with such a weight of historical content to cover that Michael MacCambridge never makes the book feel like a heavy read and maintains the reader's interest right to the end.

Brilliantly detailed without become bogged down in the dull stuff. If you haven't read this book you don't know the history of the NFL as well as you think you do.

Fantastic book, some really interesting accounts and viewpoints that tell the story of how the NFL came to be what it is today.

Includes a very well done explanation of the commercial dev of the NFL and the economics that make it a success.

A great read whether you are new to the sport or a regular!

Um dos melhores livros de futebol americano que já li na vida.

El autor detalla de manera muy clara el éxito económico ,deportivo y social de la NFL, lo compre para leerlo durante vacaciones y he quedado más que satisfecho

Not as good as 'the league's but interesting none the less

Let me start by saying this is a great book that I could not put down. The discussion of the earlier, struggling years of the NFL is fascinating and the war with the AFL was great.Having said that, and despite giving it five stars, a couple of things bothered me. First, I think, at times MacCambridge comes across as an NFL propagandist. In his quest to show that the NFL is really America's game, he denigrates other sports too much. In particular, after reading the book, you would think no one ever attends a baseball game. No doubt the NFL has been far better run than MLB but the implication that this is why football eclipsed based is, I think, a bit misleading. Simply put, football is a far better game on TV than baseball and the NFL's growth coincided with TV. MacCambridge acknowledges this but I think he downplays that fact in suggesting that the NFL was so incredibly far-sighted.The other thing that bothered me about the book is his seeming apologia for the owners. He spends little time on how the Rozelle Rule kept down salaries. Rozelle was clearly a great commissionet and comes across in the book as a good guy, but I suspect he was not as well loved by the players. He, like every other commissioner in sports, is hiref to work for the owners and to protect and advance their interests at the expense of the players if necessary. In fact, I would argue that the entire rationale of the merger with the AFL was to reduce salaries. The implication in the book is that, without the merger, there could have been no Super Bowl, but that's not true. There is no reason the leagues could not have competed on the field without being financially tied together. But, of course, the owners would not have made as much money; more of the profits would have gone to the players, who were, as we see, crippling themselves to largely profit the owners. And, no, I am not suggesting that the owners should not have made any money. But, for most of it's history and, really, even today, it's the owners that share most of the profits and the players make do. And without the strikes, the players would not have gotten that. I think MacCambridge should have done more with that. He made the NFL seem like a commonwealth of interests in which the players and owners are partners, but that's just not true.The last point is a corollary to his dismissal of baseball. The book came out well before concerns about concussions and player safety came to the fore so you can't really fault him for not being able to predict this as an issue. And he does, to some extent, address issues of player conduct; but again, this was long before the Ray Rices of the world came along. I don't blame him for not being prescient, but there seems to be a suggestion that the NFL is invincible, at least so long as the owners continue to focus on the league itself rather than their individual interest-which seems to be a slap at Jerry Jones. But, as we see, nothing is inevitable and while I don't expect the NFL to decline like boxing or even like baseball, it has significant problems and the future of the league is not necessarily as bright as it once was.Meanwhile, baseball has its own problems, of course, what with an aging demographic and so on, but no one is suggesting that kids should stop playing baseball in order to avoid being drooling slobs when they get older.Despite these criticisms, I do think this is a great book and a real gem for anyone that likes sports history, especially, of course, the NFL.

Easily one of the best sports books ever written. A must read for any football fan, both old and new.